But that "out-working", which we are assured is built on a shyness of cyclical investments rather than anything to do with the ethics of carbon, has not stretched to surrendering UniSuper's 6.26 per cent stake in Aurizon Holdings. Based on Aurizon's presently withered market capitalisation of $8.8 billion, UniSuper has $550 million of its members tied up in Queensland's long-haul rail freighter. This is an exposure to the coal production cycle that is anything but incidental.

The thing is, of course, that Aurizon is actually about as close to being a coal miner as you can be without actually digging the stuff up. It runs the train network that carries all of Queensland's coal to export ports and its runs a haulage business that carries 250 million tonnes a year of coal to ports in Queensland and NSW.

In its December half Aurizon generated earnings before interest and tax of $225 million from hauling coal and a further $249 million from ownership and management of the Central Queensland Coal Network business. It made $20 million from its other bulk haulage business and it has shut the gates on its loss-making intermodal freight operations. Aurizon is coal. Pure and simple.